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PALO ALTO, Calif. -- Hewlett-Packard Co. Chairman Ray Lane is stepping down and two other board members are leaving after pressure by disgruntled stockholders stung by the personal computer maker's downfall.

The moves announced Thursday comes just two weeks after HP barely rebuffed a shareholder rebellion aimed at Lane, John Hammergren and G. Kennedy Thompson, the two longest-serving members on the board.

Shareholders had targeted Hammergren and Thompson primarily because their roles on the board gave them oversight over HP's acquisition strategy. Most of the company's major deals in recent years have gone badly, saddling Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPW) with losses of more than $17 billion since 2010.

The departures mean none of HP's directors will have been on the board for longer than four years.

The company is now being run by Meg Whitman, who is hoping to engineer a turnaround within the next two to three years.

Although he is relinquishing the chairman's role, Lane will remain on HP's board. He will be replaced on an interim basis by Ralph Whitworth, a shareholder activist who has been on the board for less than 18 months. Whitworth, whose firm owns 34.5 million HP shares, hinted the board would be overhauled under questioning from angry shareholders during the company's March 20 annual meeting.

During the meeting, Lane's re-election as a director was backed by just 59 percent of the vote, compared with 96 percent for Ralph Whitworth.

CtW Investment Group, an HP shareholder at the forefront of the rebellion, applauded the fallout. "Shareholders stand ready to assist the board in bringing in effective, independent directors to help restore this icon of U.S. innovation," Dieter Waizenegget, CtW's executive director, said in a statement.

Beyond its troubled acquisitions, most of HP's other woes stem from a decline in PC sales as more technology spending shifts to smartphones and tablet computers. The upheaval has caused HP's revenue to fall from the previous year in six consecutive quarters. To offset the drop-off in PC sales, Whitman has cut about 15,300 jobs in the past year and is planning to eliminate about 14,000 more positions.

HP's woes have cut the company's market value in half in less than three years, wiping out $45 billion in shareholder wealth. The damage would be even worse, if HP's stock had not rebounded during the past two months on hopes that Whitman has the company headed in the right direction.

The stock rose 39 cents to close at $22.30 Thursday before the board changes were disclosed.

Hammergren, the CEO of pharmaceutical drug distributor McKesson Corp., and Thompson, the former CEO of troubled bank Wachovia Corp., will depart after HP's board meeting next month. HP intends to name two new directors to replace them by the end of this year. Until then, HP will have nine directors on its board.

(Updated April 5 at 6:15 a.m.)

This was a good year for fans of executive shenanigans. Best Buy CEO Brian J. Dunn and incoming Lockheed Martin CEO Christopher Kubasik both got the boot for having inappropriate relationships with subordinates, while Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson was canned for padding his resume. Meanwhile, Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit was forced out the door in October, shocking the financial world.

But a lot of CEOs of struggling companies managed to avoid the axe, and will head into 2013 with their jobs intact -- for now. We decided to take stock of a few of these endangered executives to assess which ones will survive 2013 at their present posts.

Outlook: At-risk

To say that Johnson's tenure is off to a rocky start would be a gross understatement. J.C. Penney (JCP) hired the former Apple retail chief in November 2011 to revitalize the struggling brand, and he responded with a series of bold moves in his first year -- doing away with coupons and promotions, bringing in more upscale brands and experimenting with such innovations as mobile checkout and "store-within-a-store" outposts for brands like Levi's.

But the attempts to turn JCP into the Apple of retail have sputtered, sending customers fleeing and the stock price tumbling. Johnson still has his defenders, who insist there will be growing pains as he implements his long-term strategy to convert the retailer's fleet of stores to his new vision. And sales are up in the stores that have been converted, suggesting that Johnson is onto something.

But it's a strategy that will take several years and a whole lot of cash, and it's unclear how much of either Johnson has to play with.

Ballmer has survived numerous calls for his ouster since taking over for Bill Gates in 2000, as he's overseen high-profile failures to get into the mobile and music games. This year Microsoft (MSFT) finally made a strong, if late, pitch to join the mobile and tablet revolution when it introduced Windows 8, a bold and stylish departure from previous operating systems which can run on PCs and tablets alike.

The French executive took over as chief executive of Best Buy (BBY) in August 2012 after predecessor Brian J. Dunn was ousted amid a sex scandal back in April. And he's inherited a mess: Same-store sales have fallen for eight straight quarters, and the electronics giant has been hit so hard by "showrooming" that it agreed to price-match Amazon and other online competitors during the holiday season.

Last week the Groupon (GRPN) founder and CEO tweeted out this picture from the company's headquarters, asking "Pretty sure it's a joke?" While the tweet referred to the "Gorpon" sign on the conference room window, we were more struck by the words prominently displayed on the monitor in the background: "COUPON d'ETAT." If things don't turn around for the couponing site, that's exactly what Mason could be facing from shareholders.

Groupon came under fire over accounting issues in late 2011 when the company was preparing for its IPO, and it's faced mounting competition from the likes of Amazon and Google, and a plummeting share price. One commentator at CNBC dubbed Mason the worst CEO of 2012, writing, "The only surprise ... is that Mason is still on the job."

A little over a year ago, Hastings' position as CEO of Netflix (NFLX) looked to be in serious peril. A change to the pricing structure in summer 2011 that effectively doubled the subscription cost for many users caused a decline in subcribers, and that was followed shortly thereafter by a boneheaded (and short-lived) attempt to spin off the DVDs-by-mail portion of the business into a new company called "Qwikster." Netflix also lost the streaming rights to Disney movies after failing to renew its agreement with Starz. The end seemed near for Hastings.

And then Netflix started to pull out of its nosedive. The company regained millions of subscribers in the first quarter of 2012, and recently bypassed Starz to regain the rights to Disney's theatrical releases. The stock has seen solid growth in the last three months.

That's not to say that the Hastings' troubles are behind him. Despite the recent rally, the company's share price has been a roller-coaster ride in 2012, and at one point the board had to adopt a "poison pill" to fend off a possible takeover bid by Carl Icahn. More recently, Hastings found himself the subject of an SEC investigation over improper disclosures, and Netflix users howled after an outage at the company's Amazon-hosted servers knocked out the service on Christmas Eve. And of course, the company faces increasing competition in the streaming game from Amazon Prime and Redbox Instant.

So Hastings isn't out of the woods. But it's been awhile since we've heard serious talk of his ouster, and the company seems to be headed back in the right direction.

No, John Boehner isn't a CEO. But as Speaker of the House, he can impact more investors and consumers than any one executive on this list, especially when it comes to budget negotiations. And his high-profile failure to bring his fellow Republicans into line on a "fiscal cliff" deal has many suggesting that his speakership could be in danger.

To be fair, he has an unenviable task: Striking a deal with Democrats that's also palatable to his party's conservative wing. His last, best shot at compromise, the so-called Plan B, was rejected by both groups before it had a chance to go to a vote, leaving Boehner and his party weakened.

That has a lot of observers questioning whether he can remain as speakerif he can't effectively lead his party. The Ohio Republican insists that his job isn't in danger, and insiders say that he faces few if any legitimate contenders. But in the wake of the fiscal cliff fiasco he finds his future a bit more hazy than before.

Got an opinion about whether these leaders will stay in their jobs in the new year, or want to suggest someone you'd add to the list? Let us know in the comments. And stay tuned throughout 2013 as we issue updates on the shifting fortunes of these beleaguered bosses.